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I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first worl

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

enneff 3y ago
I live in rural Australia and about a decade ago we lost power for 5 days after a cyclone swept through. Some parts of the grid are pretty vulnerable. I have solar and a battery now. :-)
101008 3y ago
Really? I would say most rural places, if have a power issue, won't get it resolved in one hour...
cj 3y ago
Here in (somewhat) rural New York the power goes out for a couple hours at least a few times per year. Sometimes up to 6 hours. In my town most people have propane (or gas) generators to compensate.
soco 3y ago
I grew up behind the iron curtain and power outages were a given, twice a day. Freezing temperatures in the apartments as well. But that was the Romanian communism and 50 years ago, not the USA today. Today I'm in rural Switzerland and never experienced outages, so I wouldn't accept arguments like "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside".
- paganel 3y ago
  > "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside". Everybody definitely still has outages in the Romanian countryside now, my parents (who live in the countryside somewhere in South-Eastern Romania) did have one for two or three days when there was that freakish snow-storm around last November - beginning of December. Not to mention the constant light flickering, I'm wondering how come all the electrical appliances are still in one piece. Later edit: I'm pretty sure Switzerland (and most of Western Europe, for that matter) very rarely have weather events like the one from these photos [1] [1] https://www.dobrogeanews.ro/judetul-constanta-viscol-zapada-toate-drumurile-nationale-si-cele-judetene-sunt-inchise-localitati-fara-energie-electrica-si-fara-apa-masini-persoane-blocate-in-zapada/ https://www.dobrogeanews.ro/judetul-constanta-viscol-zapada-...
  - soco 3y ago
    I honestly don't know if we can compare - is it a matter of extreme events, or being prepared for extreme events? You know there's that running joke in Romania about authorities being surprised that it snows in winter, although I agree the article shows something quite extreme. So, how "rarely" is "rarely", and is it worth preparing for it?
    - paganel 3y ago
      I agree, but on the other hand Switzerland is on another level when it comes to infrastructure compared to almost any other European country, is not even fair (I've not been to Netherlands nor to the Nordic countries, maybe they come close to that).
  - Nullabillity 3y ago
    I didn't read the comment as "and this never happens anywhere", but "and when this happens, it's due to shit infrastructure, and you can and should demand better". If you're in an environment that has strong enough winds to cause issues for power poles... you bury the fucking cables.
    - paganel 3y ago
      And then it becomes very tedious to service them. Or some guy digs a hole in front of his house and suddenly half of the county is without power, with that guy in intensive care. To say nothing of the fact than in 20 or 30 years' time everyone will have forgotten which cables are buried where, because that happens all the time, almost everywhere.
      - soco 3y ago
        Here they are buried and even I have the map of the cables going in front of my house - and no I'm not from the power company. If it doesn't work in one place doesn't mean it cannot work. Maybe the infrastructure in some places is better because those places were more concerned with the infrastructure in the first place? Because nowhere on earth did those underground cables just pop into existence...
mardifoufs 3y ago
We lost power for 4 days last year in Canada's second biggest city, Montreal :). The weather is pretty harsh to power infra in north America for sure
raesene9 3y ago
Really not that uncommon in rural areas. I'm in the Scottish highlands (only an hour from Glasgow) and when the winter storms come in, we can be out of power for some hours, there's been a couple of instances in the last year, so not common, but not unheard of either. That's not a major surprise as the power company often has to fix lines in pretty stormy conditions in thinly populated areas. Our solution to it has been having a battery which kicks in and can run the house for 12 hours or so.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  I'll say though, I grew up in rural West Wales, and I don't think we ever had a power cut lasting longer than an hour or two, and even that only happened a few times a decade. It's not an area known for nasty weather though.
  - Twirrim 3y ago
    I live just outside of Seattle. Major urban area. I got so tired of multi hour power outages, I paid something like $20k to have a natural gas generator installed in March 2022. Since then it has run 16 times (based on a quick read of the monthly summary emails), of which maybe 5 were short term couple of minutes. Even when I've lived in other parts of the US, I've experienced more, and longer, power outages than I ever experienced in the UK, in areas of comparable urban density. But, you know, what's lots of inconvenience to customers when we could be making more profit for our shareholders, instead of burying our power lines!
fabian2k 3y ago
I can't remember the last time I had a power outage, it must have been many years now. And even the few power outages I can vaguely remember were very short, so electronics restarted but you weren't without power for long enough to cause any issues. This is in Germany, and I suspect the fact that all regular power lines are buried helps a lot with reliability here.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air. Eastern seacoast areas in Canada and USA frequently lose power due to high winds - tropical storms or hurricanes making landfall. Similarly Winter blizzards. Thunderstorm do sometimes hit power infrastructure as well. North American grid is famously interconnected and fragile too. I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. But if it's a big storm with many outages it'll take some time. In Nova Scotia for example it's not uncommon for some households to be without power for days. And all bets are off if significant parts of grid are down and we struggle with startup sequences.
- nvahalik 3y ago
  > Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. While power lines above the air are more susceptible to disturbances, they are also FAR easier to deal with.
  - NortySpock 3y ago
    Easier to fix is a real win. Europeans laugh at our cheap 2x4 houses too, but being able to demolish a non-load-bearing wall in two hours and build a different one in a day or two means I can literally reconfigure my house when living situations change -- like the college kid needing a quiet room to study in, or closing off a new bedroom area for the sister-in-law needing to move in for a few months.
    - seszett 3y ago
      Non load-bearing walls are usually drywall on wood or metal studs in the Europe I know of. They are probably as easy to remove as your (wooden?) walls, but I don't know anyone who would do it for just a few months.
    - mortehu 3y ago
      Easier to fix is a lot more important when things are breaking all the time. This reminds me of people putting water pipes outside the house to make them easier to thaw when they freeze, rather then inside the wall where they never freeze.
jamesponddotco 3y ago
Growing up in the rural zone of Brazil, power outages were a constant issue, which thought me to always keep multiple backups of my data. Now that I live in a big Brazilian city though, I can't remember the last time it happened. Even when the reserves were low during the pandemic, service did hold.
stetrain 3y ago
Rural Australia has its own extremes, but does it get much severe weather? I think blizzards, ice storms, tornados, and hurricanes are more common in North America and it's pretty tough to secure infrastructure against those with 100% uptime.
- wkipling 3y ago
  Bushfires, cyclones, floods, extreme heat and the biggest thunderstorms you'll ever see. Yeah I'd say that's severe weather.
  - stetrain 3y ago
    And power stays up while all of those are actively happening?
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  I've seen my backyard spontaneously bust into flames from the extreme heat. Never had a power outage.
debacle 3y ago
Now imagine losing power and heat and the ability to drive anywhere in -10 degree weather, while your house slowly gets colder and colder.
sevagh 3y ago
In last year's Montreal ice storm [1] (not rural, the heart of the city), I lost power for upwards of 7 days. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Canada_ice_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Canada_ice_storm
pgt 3y ago
Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government. The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis
- jl6 3y ago
  Is there a market for private "local" power plants, like maybe a small out of town solar farm?
  - chmod775 3y ago
    Yes, but the corrupt people running that shitshow try to prevent anyone from doing such things because it makes them look bad and might cut into the profits they're extracting from the lifeless body of South Africa's infrastructure. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-04-06-frankfort-battles-eskom-over-use-of-solar-to-reduce-load-shedding/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-04-06-frankfort... In that instance or another owners of a solar farm even provided their excess power to the town free of charge.
- Flopoto 3y ago
  Ssooooo everyone who can afford it uses now solar?
  - theblazehen 3y ago
    Not always solar, most have just the battery and inverter, and charge the batteries when grid is available
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Would you consider this "first world" if you don't even get electricity for a full day?
harshreality 3y ago
A lot of people have trees growing over, or very close to, power lines; during storms, high winds or ice accumulation cause many branches to break. Around here, utility crews periodically prune trees back from the wires, but a significant storm will still see hundreds of thousands without power. After a day or two they get it down to tens of thousands; fixing all of those can take many days. One downed power line can be repaired in an hour, but 1000s take a while. Some of the tail-end of repairs are more complicated, too. Hurricanes, long-track tornadoes, and earthquakes are even worse. It's not that technology is lacking, it's that the cost of making infrastructure resilient to very bad weather (worse than Australia sees) is too high. Most people who want to do something about it buy a generator, which solves most of their problem even though in aggregate it's terribly inefficient.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Then you should practice. The chances you never experience it are low, and better learn when you don't have to. Besides, it will give you a better appreciation of human achivements once you don't take hot water for granted.

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

enneff 3y ago

I live in rural Australia and about a decade ago we lost power for 5 days after a cyclone swept through. Some parts of the grid are pretty vulnerable. I have solar and a battery now. :-)

101008 3y ago

Really? I would say most rural places, if have a power issue, won't get it resolved in one hour...

cj 3y ago

Here in (somewhat) rural New York the power goes out for a couple hours at least a few times per year. Sometimes up to 6 hours. In my town most people have propane (or gas) generators to compensate.

soco 3y ago

I grew up behind the iron curtain and power outages were a given, twice a day. Freezing temperatures in the apartments as well. But that was the Romanian communism and 50 years ago, not the USA today. Today I'm in rural Switzerland and never experienced outages, so I wouldn't accept arguments like "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside".

paganel 3y ago
> "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside". Everybody definitely still has outages in the Romanian countryside now, my parents (who live in the countryside somewhere in South-Eastern Romania) did have one for two or three days when there was that freakish snow-storm around last November - beginning of December. Not to mention the constant light flickering, I'm wondering how come all the electrical appliances are still in one piece. Later edit: I'm pretty sure Switzerland (and most of Western Europe, for that matter) very rarely have weather events like the one from these photos [1] [1] https://www.dobrogeanews.ro/judetul-constanta-viscol-zapada-toate-drumurile-nationale-si-cele-judetene-sunt-inchise-localitati-fara-energie-electrica-si-fara-apa-masini-persoane-blocate-in-zapada/ https://www.dobrogeanews.ro/judetul-constanta-viscol-zapada-...
- soco 3y ago
  I honestly don't know if we can compare - is it a matter of extreme events, or being prepared for extreme events? You know there's that running joke in Romania about authorities being surprised that it snows in winter, although I agree the article shows something quite extreme. So, how "rarely" is "rarely", and is it worth preparing for it?
  - paganel 3y ago
    I agree, but on the other hand Switzerland is on another level when it comes to infrastructure compared to almost any other European country, is not even fair (I've not been to Netherlands nor to the Nordic countries, maybe they come close to that).
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  I didn't read the comment as "and this never happens anywhere", but "and when this happens, it's due to shit infrastructure, and you can and should demand better". If you're in an environment that has strong enough winds to cause issues for power poles... you bury the fucking cables.
  - paganel 3y ago
    And then it becomes very tedious to service them. Or some guy digs a hole in front of his house and suddenly half of the county is without power, with that guy in intensive care. To say nothing of the fact than in 20 or 30 years' time everyone will have forgotten which cables are buried where, because that happens all the time, almost everywhere.
    - soco 3y ago
      Here they are buried and even I have the map of the cables going in front of my house - and no I'm not from the power company. If it doesn't work in one place doesn't mean it cannot work. Maybe the infrastructure in some places is better because those places were more concerned with the infrastructure in the first place? Because nowhere on earth did those underground cables just pop into existence...

mardifoufs 3y ago

We lost power for 4 days last year in Canada's second biggest city, Montreal :). The weather is pretty harsh to power infra in north America for sure

raesene9 3y ago

Really not that uncommon in rural areas. I'm in the Scottish highlands (only an hour from Glasgow) and when the winter storms come in, we can be out of power for some hours, there's been a couple of instances in the last year, so not common, but not unheard of either. That's not a major surprise as the power company often has to fix lines in pretty stormy conditions in thinly populated areas. Our solution to it has been having a battery which kicks in and can run the house for 12 hours or so.

dukeyukey 3y ago
I'll say though, I grew up in rural West Wales, and I don't think we ever had a power cut lasting longer than an hour or two, and even that only happened a few times a decade. It's not an area known for nasty weather though.
- Twirrim 3y ago
  I live just outside of Seattle. Major urban area. I got so tired of multi hour power outages, I paid something like $20k to have a natural gas generator installed in March 2022. Since then it has run 16 times (based on a quick read of the monthly summary emails), of which maybe 5 were short term couple of minutes. Even when I've lived in other parts of the US, I've experienced more, and longer, power outages than I ever experienced in the UK, in areas of comparable urban density. But, you know, what's lots of inconvenience to customers when we could be making more profit for our shareholders, instead of burying our power lines!

fabian2k 3y ago

I can't remember the last time I had a power outage, it must have been many years now. And even the few power outages I can vaguely remember were very short, so electronics restarted but you weren't without power for long enough to cause any issues. This is in Germany, and I suspect the fact that all regular power lines are buried helps a lot with reliability here.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air. Eastern seacoast areas in Canada and USA frequently lose power due to high winds - tropical storms or hurricanes making landfall. Similarly Winter blizzards. Thunderstorm do sometimes hit power infrastructure as well. North American grid is famously interconnected and fragile too. I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. But if it's a big storm with many outages it'll take some time. In Nova Scotia for example it's not uncommon for some households to be without power for days. And all bets are off if significant parts of grid are down and we struggle with startup sequences.

nvahalik 3y ago
> Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. While power lines above the air are more susceptible to disturbances, they are also FAR easier to deal with.
- NortySpock 3y ago
  Easier to fix is a real win. Europeans laugh at our cheap 2x4 houses too, but being able to demolish a non-load-bearing wall in two hours and build a different one in a day or two means I can literally reconfigure my house when living situations change -- like the college kid needing a quiet room to study in, or closing off a new bedroom area for the sister-in-law needing to move in for a few months.
  - seszett 3y ago
    Non load-bearing walls are usually drywall on wood or metal studs in the Europe I know of. They are probably as easy to remove as your (wooden?) walls, but I don't know anyone who would do it for just a few months.
  - mortehu 3y ago
    Easier to fix is a lot more important when things are breaking all the time. This reminds me of people putting water pipes outside the house to make them easier to thaw when they freeze, rather then inside the wall where they never freeze.

jamesponddotco 3y ago

Growing up in the rural zone of Brazil, power outages were a constant issue, which thought me to always keep multiple backups of my data. Now that I live in a big Brazilian city though, I can't remember the last time it happened. Even when the reserves were low during the pandemic, service did hold.

stetrain 3y ago

Rural Australia has its own extremes, but does it get much severe weather? I think blizzards, ice storms, tornados, and hurricanes are more common in North America and it's pretty tough to secure infrastructure against those with 100% uptime.

wkipling 3y ago
Bushfires, cyclones, floods, extreme heat and the biggest thunderstorms you'll ever see. Yeah I'd say that's severe weather.
- stetrain 3y ago
  And power stays up while all of those are actively happening?
madeofpalk 3y ago
I've seen my backyard spontaneously bust into flames from the extreme heat. Never had a power outage.

debacle 3y ago

Now imagine losing power and heat and the ability to drive anywhere in -10 degree weather, while your house slowly gets colder and colder.

sevagh 3y ago

In last year's Montreal ice storm [1] (not rural, the heart of the city), I lost power for upwards of 7 days. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Canada_ice_storm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Canada_ice_storm

pgt 3y ago

Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government. The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

jl6 3y ago
Is there a market for private "local" power plants, like maybe a small out of town solar farm?
- chmod775 3y ago
  Yes, but the corrupt people running that shitshow try to prevent anyone from doing such things because it makes them look bad and might cut into the profits they're extracting from the lifeless body of South Africa's infrastructure. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-04-06-frankfort-battles-eskom-over-use-of-solar-to-reduce-load-shedding/ https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-04-06-frankfort... In that instance or another owners of a solar farm even provided their excess power to the town free of charge.
Flopoto 3y ago
Ssooooo everyone who can afford it uses now solar?
- theblazehen 3y ago
  Not always solar, most have just the battery and inverter, and charge the batteries when grid is available
madeofpalk 3y ago
Would you consider this "first world" if you don't even get electricity for a full day?

harshreality 3y ago

A lot of people have trees growing over, or very close to, power lines; during storms, high winds or ice accumulation cause many branches to break. Around here, utility crews periodically prune trees back from the wires, but a significant storm will still see hundreds of thousands without power. After a day or two they get it down to tens of thousands; fixing all of those can take many days. One downed power line can be repaired in an hour, but 1000s take a while. Some of the tail-end of repairs are more complicated, too. Hurricanes, long-track tornadoes, and earthquakes are even worse. It's not that technology is lacking, it's that the cost of making infrastructure resilient to very bad weather (worse than Australia sees) is too high. Most people who want to do something about it buy a generator, which solves most of their problem even though in aggregate it's terribly inefficient.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Then you should practice. The chances you never experience it are low, and better learn when you don't have to. Besides, it will give you a better appreciation of human achivements once you don't take hot water for granted.